How Actors of Local Society (Community) Influence the Development of Decentralized General Education, and their Attitude to it.

One of the most urgent problems is to find ways to involve local society in the development of general education in municipalities. One of the solutions is to increase the influence of local society on the decision-making processes of municipalities. The aim of the research is to find out the role of local society groups – students, their parents and principals – in the decision-making process, and their influence on the development of decentralized general education. The opinions of different actor groups are compared in order to find out their attitude to the decentralization processes of general education promoted by the LEA, and analyse the possible factors that influence the actor groups in the administrative decision-making processes which are used in the development of the LEA's policy and strategies.Quantitative and qualitative data collection methods are used – polls and profound interviews. The approach of the actor network theory is used in the research, which gives an opportunity to create an actor network for the decentralization process of general education. The most important actor groups in the process of decentralization have been identified. The results of the research show that in order to achieve the goals of development of general education, it is necessary to estimate the optimal degree of decentralization of educational management. The results of the research also show that sociological research gives substantial support to the planning of the development of general education towards decentralization and the achievement of the set aims.